Le sigh… It’s been a terrible year for movies at the box office and audiences just haven’t been coming out for good movies. One of them neglected by the moviegoing public is George Miller’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” the prequel movie to “Mad Max Fury Road” starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth (read our review).
Despite great reviews, 90% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, and even a hugely popular audience score, ‘Furiosa’ never connected with audiences. So far, the movie seems to have run out of gasoline, having only earned $63 million domestically and $97 million internationally for a worldwide figure of only $160.3 million. Given a reported $168 million budget, not counting promotion and advertising, this movie isn’t going to turn into the black anytime soon, and it’s reportedly already getting ready to turn up on VOD and other digital platforms, which would signal basically the end of its theatrical life.
And as for the mooted sequel, “Mad Max: The Wasteland” that Tom Hardy is supposedly set to star in, reprising his role from ‘Fury Road,’ but set before that film’s events, well, if it wasn’t obvious before, it is now.
In a new interview with Forbes, Tom Hardy, promoting his upcoming new film, “The Bikeriders,” when asked about Miller’s ‘The Wasteland,’ the actor simply said, “I don’t think that’s happening.”
That’s all that Hardy had to say on the matter, but the box office likely already made this decision for Warner Bros. If ‘Furiosa’ can’t perform, it’s unlikely they’re going to greenlight another expensive ‘Mad Max’ movie, and the franchise just might be dead for good now (at least if you consider that George Miller is 79 and probably doesn’t have many more of these films left in him).
As for what Hardy is doing next, well, he teased a mystery project that’s mounting up but didn’t divulge details.
“I have a secret thing that I’m building up. I’ve been working on that for a while now. There’s a lot of different things that make me get excited, you know? Being able to do things like ‘Venom’ has allowed my shoulders to grow and understand that there are lots of different faculties and ways to pour creativity into output and art, and have creative colors in lots of different sectors,” he explained. So, I’ll be going back to theatre— there’s independent film, there’s big movies, there’s other stuff. All of these things are constantly on my mind. We have several things on the slate in development.”
But that doesn’t help us with ‘The Wasteland’, unfortunately. “Mad Max: Fury Road” wasn’t a massive hit at the box office either, but at least grossed $380.4 million at the time and then became a sensation on DVD and streaming. Time will tell if anything changes, but given ‘Furiosa’s DOA-ness, this might be the end of the road.